Contents

Introduction

I. Passions
of the
InternetII. Passions
in the
Internet

Conclusion

Bibliography

Abstract

The first part
of the paper
deals with the hackers' visions that gave rise to the internet as
analysed
by Pekka Himanen in his book "The Hacker Ethic." According to Himanen,
hacker ethic is a passionate ethic of work that is seen as an
alternative
to predominant Protestant ethic in capitalist societies. Hacker ethic
is
based on such values as openness, information-sharing, and the
passionate
desire to create something together in a joyful way. In the second part
of the paper I discuss how these passions turned into the opposite as
the
internet grew up, giving rise to a new mythology or cyber-gnosis.
Taking some insights from Emmanuel Lévinas I suggest a twist of
the hacker ethic into a passionate ethic of the Other particularly of
her
mouth and stomach.

Introduction

The
internet is a
child of Ares,
the war's god. It was created in 1969 by the US Department of Defense
as
part of its "Advanced Research Program Agency" (ARPA). But this is just
one story about defense networks. Homer tells a not less passionate one
(Od. 8, 267 ff.). Hephaistos, the god of fire and technology and
Aphrodite's
husband, was informed by Helios about the liaison of his wife with
Ares.
He then built an invisible net, like a spider's web, by which Ares and
Aphrodite, caught in burning love, were kept together until all male
gods
could bear testimony to the situation -- with an incessant laughter.
But,
hélàs, Aphrodite gave birth to Eros. According to Plato
(Symp.
203b), Eros was in fact the son of Poros, a personification of
purchasing
and wealth, and Penia, a personification of poverty, who conceived him
during a festivity in honour of Aphrodite.

Some
of
Hephaistos' successors,
today's hackers, seem to be no less passionate in the art of building
invisible
networks by which not war or merchant's spirit but universal free and
peaceful
life should be the outcome. In the following I will first refer to
Pekka
Himanen analysis of the hacker's passions that gave rise to the
internet.
In the second part I will describe how the internet became the
ambiguous
place of a cyber-mythology.

I.
Passions of the Internet

In "A
Brief
History of Computer
Hackerism" Pekka Himanen tells another story as the military one
concerning
the passions that gave birth to the internet. He writes:

"The
hackers transformed
computers and the Net into a social medium that was not part of either
the governmental nor corporate plans. Email was invented in July 1970
by
Ray Tomlinson, who is also the one to thank (or blame) for the @-symbol
in email addresses. Abbate describes the consequence of this unexpected
innovation: "ARPANET users came to rely on email in their day-to-day
activities,
and before long email had eclipsed all other network applications in
volume
of traffic." From then on, e-mail has been the most popular use of the
Net." (Himanen 2003)

Himanen
stresses
how the hacker
ideal of openness influenced the creation of new communication forms
such
as chat, invented by Jarkko Oikarinen, a student at the University of
Ouli
in Finland, in 1988 or the alt(ernative) news group domain, cofounded
in
1987 by California libertarian John Gilmore, and the worlwide hypertext
vision of Tim Berners-Lee, working at particle physics research center
CERN in Switzerland. A key issue in the creation of a free
digital
space, which according to Berner-Lee's dream should be "a space in
which
anything could be linked to anything," was the elimination of the
'operator'
"comparable in experience to the elimination of telephone operators"
allowing
a free and direct exchange between individuals. Personal computers
should
be used not to control but to free people (Himanen 2003). At the
beginning
of the hacker's tradition during the 1960s at MIT there is a leading
passionate
mood namely enthusiasm. Hackers are people who "program
enthusiastically."
(Himanen 2003) In the preface of his book Himanen remarks that the
concept
of 'hacker' has been applied by hackers themselves to "an expert or
enthusiast
of any kind." In other words, a hacker is a person who is
enthusiastically
or, as we may also say, passionately dedicated to his/her work (Himanen
2001). The hacker ethic's driving value can be stated as follows:

"The
belief that
information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an
ethical
duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and
facilitating
access to information and to computing resources wherever possible."
(Himanen
2003)

In the
site of his
well-known
book "The Hacker Ethic" – the book was planned as a collaborative work
with Linus Torvalds and Manuel Castells, authors of prologue and
epilogue – Himanen makes a difference between 'hackers' and
'crackers' or
between
a constructive and a destructive use of computers:

"Here,
the word
hacker doesn't refer to computer criminals but what the word originally
meant: a person who wants to do something that one is passionate about,
something in which one can realize oneself creatively, and something in
which one can build things for the good of all. The hacker ethic is a
new
work ethic questioning the old Protestant ethic." (Himanen 2001)

It
seems prima
facie
paradoxical to oppose, as Himanen does, hacker's ethic which is a 'work
ethic' to Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
instead of considering it in opposition between to an ethic of leisure.
But in fact, this is an opposition between two ethics of work. Hacker's
values go, according to Himanen, beyond computer hackerism as they
promote
"passionate and freely rhythmed work." Its basis is not just
utilitarian
rationality but creative imagination (Himanen 2001). The same can be
said
with regard to hacker's money ethic. While in the Protestant ethic,
money
is made by "information-owning," hacker's money ethic is based on
"information-sharing."
Instead of being based on the efficient rationality of producing
(material)
things as a mean to an endless process of economic profit, hacker's
activity
is guided by "a desire to create something that one's peer community
would
find valuable -- a common attitude." (Himanen 2001) Finally Himanen
mentions
a third element of hacker ethic namely their "network ethic or nethic"
a dimension most closely related to modern Protestant ideals to freedom
of expression seen now as freedom of access to the internet. This seems
today's driving passion of the world wide and WWW debate on the so
called
digital divide.

According
to
Himanen, hacker
ethic is passionate Platonic:

"This
passionate
relationship to work is not an attitude found only among computer
hackers.
For example, the academic world can be seen as its much older
predecessor.
The researcher's passionate intellectual inquiry received similar
expression
nearly 2,500 years ago when Plato, founder of the first academy, said
of
philosophy, "like light flashing forth when a fire is kindled, it is
born
in the soul and straightway nourishes itself." (Himanen 2001)

The
context of the
quotation
from the "Seventh Letter" (Ep. VII, 341 c-d) concerns Plato's famous
thesis
that true philosophic insight cannot be communicated through writing
but
arises "suddenly" ("exaiphnes") when people live together ("syzen")
and talk often and familiarly to each other ("synousias") about
such matters. But hackers are not said to be true Platonists no less
than
followers of the Protestant ethic are said to belong necessary to the
Western
civilisation so that, for instance, no Japanese could adhere to it. In
other words Plato and Weber are less historic examples than symbols of
a specific view of work and society. Hacker ethic is a passionate or
erotic
one and, in this regard, it is the opposite to the kind of ascetic work
ethics described by Max Weber (Weber 2000). Its historical precursor
was
not the academy but the monastery. Hackers activity is described by
Linus
Torvalds in the Prologue as "entertainment" because it is "interesting,
exciting, and joyous" and goes beyond the realm of surviving or of
economic
life. Himanen prefers Eric Raymond's word "passion" instead of
"entertainment."
(Himanen 2001) In his essay "The Academy and the Monastery" dedicated
to
Eric Raymond, Himanen writes:

"The
reason why
the hackers' open-source model works so effectively seems to be - in
addition
to the facts that they are realizing their passions and are motivated
by
peer recognition, as scientists are, too -- that to a great degree it
conforms
to the ideal open academic model, which is historically the best
adapted
for information creation." (Himanen 2003a)

Raymond
considered
the bazaar
instead of the cathedral as model for the spirit of open-source.
Himanen
prefers another pair namely the academy and the monastery. Following
the
ideal of the academic model hackers abhor plagiarism and submit
themselves
freely to the internal sanctions of their peers. Hacker's passion is
learning
in an "informal way, following their passions" the task of teaching
being
"to strengthen the learners' ability to pose problems, develop lines of
thought, and present criticism." (Himanen 2003a)

Hacker
ethic is
a Socratic
one. But hacker's passionate learning is not directed as Plato's
passionate
search for truth towards a world beyond the appearances. Computer
programming
is an embedded activity and near to "flesh life." Sandy Lerner liked
riding
naked on horseback. Richard Stallman was a "bearded and longhaired
guru."
Eric Raymond liked role-playing games (Himanen 2001). These examples
are
as far from Max Weber's monks, protestants, and bureaucrats as they are
from the Platonic contempt of the material world with its sensorial and
sensual pleasures. This kind of work ethic is closer to the Epicurean
than
to the Platonic tradition.

The
network
society as such
does not simply deny or supersede industrial society and its Protestant
work ethics. It would be an illusion to believe that technological
advances
would "somehow, automatically, make our lives less work-centered."
(Himanen
2001) In other words, it is not the technological passion of the
internet
that is going to change society but "an alternative spirit" that may be
able to "crack the lock of the iron cage" which, according to Max
Weber,
would be the stage of a lifeless and materialistic work-centered ethic
(Weber 2000, 188). But even if work in the sense of labor will not end,
as Himanen stresses following Manuel Castells, hacker work-ethic is
considered
as the opposite to the view of a society in which work has become an
end
in itself. If Protestant ethic moved the centre of gravity from Sunday
to Friday, then hacker ethic is itself moved by a "pre-Protestant"
ethic.
Why this expression instead of "Catholic ethic"? Answer: because,
although
Catholic ethic is more near to Sunday and to joy, it is hierarchical,
dogmatic,
and monastic. Hackers take the best of both traditions and meet
at
the Academy not at the cathedral. To put it in Greek mythological
terms,
their leading gods are not Sisyphus and Ares but Hephaistos and Eros --
working in the Academia. In order to realise their passions, hackers:

"are
ready to accept
that the pursuit even of interesting tasks may not always be
unmitigated
bliss. For hackers, passion describes the general tenor of their
activity,
though its fulfilment may not be sheer joyful play in all aspects.
(...)
Passionate and creative, hacking also entails hard work." (Himanen 2001)

We may
conclude
that the hacker's
passion is this networking of joy and work, of Sunday and Friday that
goes
beyond the alternative 'either pure work or pure leisure.' The object
of
this passion is life itself, passionate life, creativity. The key issue
is that such a fundamental attitude is not restricted to computer
hackerism.
This means that the passion of life is stronger and broader than the
passion
of the internet. In order to make sense, the passion of the internet,
hacker
ethic in a narrow sense, has to become a passion for life. But there is
an ambiguity in hacker ethic as it seems to blur the difference between
the passion of doing good work with the passion of being good or of
joyful
and creative activity. The tension between technical knowledge ('techne'')
concerning how to produce ('poiesis') something and ethical
knowledge
('phronesis') dealing with what kind of action ('praxis')
makes ourselves better and happier is, according to Aristotle, a
crucial
one. It seems to me as if this tension is particularly difficult
to perceive within the perspective of information technology as far as
we intend to program not just production processes but human action.
There
is a tension between ethics and informatics, i.e., between the passion
of programming life and the passions of life itself (Capurro 1990,
2003).
This tension shines forth when we explore them in the internet.

II.
Passions in the Internet

Passions
are
overall present
in the internet particularly the passions of the body but also, of
course,
the ones of the soul. This sounds paradoxical since according to John
Perry
Barlow:

"Cyberspace
consists
of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a
standing
wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both
everywhere
and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live." (Barlow 1996)

Barlow's
"Declaration of the
Independence of Cyberspace" is based on the dichotomy between body and
thinking or, more precisely, between an ontology of matter and a
digital
ontology (Capurro 2002). The exclusion of the body from cyberspace
concerns
no less the political and economic life. Barlow proclaims:

"Governments
of
the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from
Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of
the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no
sovereingty
where we gather. (Barlow 1996)

This
kind of
digital divide
is, of course, not eliminated in case every human being has access to
the
internet and/or a homepage. In contrast to Barlow's proclamation the
internet
has become a common place for all kinds of sexual, economic, and
political
transactions with their corresponding passions and inequities. The
"global
conversation of bits" between "virtual selves" (Barlow 1996) looks like
a parody of an angelic society (Capurro 1995, Esterbauer 1998). The
prophets
of the internet promise no less than "salvation in cyberspace"
(Niewiandomski
2002). This is indeed a kind of "cyber-gnosis" (Wertheim 1999). The
alternative
"bits or bodies" (Frohmann 2000) means no less than the exclusion of
the
social and material basis of human existence. The Canadian information
scientist Bernd Frohmann writes:

"Since
information
always refers us to materiality and social practices, a leading issue
of
information ethics, such as access, cannot be construed simply as
access
to something called "information". Access to information refers us to
access
to social practices. The problem for the poor, the marginal, the
outsiders,
is not that they lack laptops, but that they are unjustly excluded from
the social networks essential for trust in documents, in utterances, in
representations and texts of any kind, in short, for information to
emerge
for them at all." (Frohmann 2000, 434)

The
leading
passion of our time
is the passion of communication which is indeed an angeletic passion. I
use the neologism 'angeletic' in order to draw the attention to the
phenomenon
of messages and messengers. According to sociologist Niklas Luhmann,
there
is a difference between message ("Mitteilung"), i.e., the action of
offering
something (potentially) meaningful to a social system ("Sinnangebot"),
information ("Information"), i.e., the process of selecting meaning
from
different possibilities offered by a message, and understanding
("Verstehen"),
i.e., the integration of the selected meaning within the system, as the
three dimensions of communication within social systems (Luhmann 1987,
196). Message and information are related but not identical concepts:

a message
is
sender-dependent,
i.e. it is based on a heteronomic or asymmetric structure. This is not
the case of information: we receive a message, but we ask for
information,

a message
is
supposed to bring
something new and/or relevant to the receiver. This is also the case of
information,

a message
can
be coded and transmitted
through different media or messengers. This is also the case of
information,
a message is an utterance that gives rise to the receiver's selection
through
a release mechanism or interpretation.

The
message
phenomenon implies
thus a heteronomic structure between sender and receiver. I have
suggested
that we need not only a theory of media but a theory of messages and
messengers
or an angeletics (Capurro 2003a).

The
passion of
communication
is a modern one as far as modernity particularly since the
Enlightenment
proclaimed the ideal of censorship-free production and distribution of
messages that culminated in the principle of freedom of the press.
This principle which can be seen as the modern version of the
principle
of freedom of speech in oral societies, became a basic element
of
modern democracy. The passion of communication gave rise in the middle
of the 20th century to a new technology of message distribution and use
that we call the internet. With its different possibilities of
distributing
messages (one-to-many, many-to-one, many-to-many, one-to-one) the
internet
brought about a paradigm shift with regard to the hierarchical
structure
of mass media particularly since the widespread social use of such
tools
as e-mail, chat, and mailing lists. With the development of cellular
phones
these internet tools became ubiquitous. The question of freedom of
access
is seen as a crucial issue as far as networked mediated communication
plays
a major role in the economic, political, social, and cultural
development
of nations. The involuntary exclusion from the internet is called the digital
divide.

But
we live
indeed in a time
of "empty angels" or “mediatic nihilism”, in which we forget what
message
is to be sent while the messengers multiply as Peter Sloterdijk
remarks:
“This is the very disangelium of current times” (Sloterdijk
1997).
Nietzsche's word "Disangelium" (Nietzsche 1999, 211) in contrast
to evangelium, points in this case to the empty nature of the
messages
disseminated by the mass media, culminating in Marshall McLuhan's
dictum:
"The medium is the message." This is a paradoxical outcome of hacker
ethic
with its passions for free, open, and joyful research. Hacker's
alternative
spirit that would "crack the lock of the iron cage" (Max Weber) has
produced
an invisible cage of surveillance, oppression, and exclusion. Secondly,
the abhorrence of plagiarism has turned into a generalised
copy-and-paste
syndrome. People lose the ability and the joy to think by themselves.

This
is exactly
what Plato
put into the mouth of the Egyptian king Thamus who was not convinced
about
how useful the invention of writing was, as suggested by god Theut, the
Hermes of Greek mythology. According to Theut's marketing slogans,
writing
was a medicine ('pharmakon') for improving memory and making
people
wiser but, in fact, king Thamus was not convinced with this kind of
technology
assessment and foresaw that his people would become idle and forget the
capability of remembering and thinking on their own (Phaidr. 275 a-b).
Finally, the message society suffers from the call syndrome. Everyone
seems
obsessed with the idea of receiving or not a message that might be of
crucial
importance for her life, his business, their business etc., and vice
versa,
everyone seems obsessed with the idea of sending messages all the time,
to anybody, and anywhere that might be of no less importance with
regard
to all these objectives. The first obsession can be called the apocalyptic
obsession, the second one the prophet obsession. Between
them
we can find all possible degrees of passions of and in the internet
that
becomes more and more the core of society as it turns to be invisible
and
trivial.

The
hacker's
passion of information
sharing turns into the cult of information protection. The Protestant
ethic
of profit takes the lead of the internet and creates for a few seconds
a new economy that immediately blurs and lets the iron cage become even
more powerful as it gets more digital intelligence inside. This seems
also
the case with regard to all kinds of 'flesh cages' that become
re-engineered
and integrated into a super bio-information system. But, in the
meantime,
people are still hungry and suffer in their everyday existence. It
would
be misleading to oppose the passion of eating to the passion of
speaking
or to believe that there is a simple logic as to what should be done
first.
But, obviously, first things first!

"Grand
est le
manger" - "Eating
is great!" is a slogan of Rabbi Yohanan recurrent in the work of
Emmanuel
Lévinas, particularly in his comments to the Talmud or "the oral
law" (Ouaknin 2003). Human beings are not only speaking beings but also
hungry ones. Both passions, the passion of eating and the passion of
speaking
belong together. Emmanuel Lévinas' "ethic of the Other" is a
heteronomic
or, as we could also call it, an angeletic ethic as it takes the call
of
the other, namely 'I am hungry', as the basic one. But, at the same
time,
it reflects on this call in order to be able to answer to it not only
with
regard to the materiality of her stomach -- usually Lévinas'
ethic
is well known for the importance he gives to the face of the other
--
but in order to give her a message as well. Humans do not live from
bread
only.

The
passions of
the internet
and the passions in the internet are passions of speaking. Also with
regard
to them the ethic of passions, being a pre-Protestant or a Protestant
one,
that gives the primacy to the own passions can be ethically twisted
through
a reflection and action that gives the primacy to the passions of the
other,
particularly to her stomach, a word whose Greek origin means at the
same
time open mouth ('stoma') and stomach.

Conclusion

Michel
Foucault
distinguishes
the following kinds of technologies, namely:

"technologies
of production,
which permit us to produce, transform, or manipulate things,"

"technologies
of sign systems,
which permit us to use signs, meanings, symbols, or
significations,"

"technologies
of power which
determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or
domination, an objectivizing of the subject," and finally

"technologies
of the self, which
permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of
others
a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts,
conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to
attain
a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or
immortality."
(Foucault 1988, 18)

I
would like to
suggest the
following technologies of the self -- to be considered no less as
technologies
of the self for the other -- in order to cope with the passions of the
internet as well as with the passions in the internet, but surely not
in
order to attain immortality: the art of friendship in the face of
oppression,
the art of silence in the face of verbosity, and the art of
laughter
in the face of fear (Capurro 2003, 1996, 1995).